St. Albert is once again flush with cash now that the city’s popular toilet rebate program has returned.
City officials announced this week that St. Albert residents would be able to get $50 rebates for replacing their old toilets with low or dual-flush ones as of July 2.
The $30,000 rebate program is part of the city’s ongoing efforts to reduce its water use to 200 litres per person per day by 2020, says city environment co-ordinator Megan Myers. It was last held in 2012.
Ecofitt, a national distributor of water conservation products and programs, is running this year’s rebate program.
“Older toilets are very inefficient,” Myers says – some pre-1990s ones can use up to 20 litres per flush, whereas dual or low-flush models use just three to six litres. Toilet flushes can account for about 30 per cent of a home’s indoor water use.
The 2012 rebate program replaced some 450 toilets that now collectively prevent about 4.05 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and save almost three Olympic swimming pools worth of water each year, Myers says. It was also completely tapped out in just six months – something she expects will happen to this one too.
Unlike the 2012 program, Myers says this year’s rebate is offering $50 for any toilet replaced by a low or dual-flush model instead of $50 for a low flush and $75 for a dual-flush. The city made this change because dual-flush toilets can use more water than low-flush ones, and they didn’t want to bias people toward them, she explains.
The rebate is available to any St. Albert resident who buys a replacement toilet between Jan. 1, 2015, and Dec. 31, 2016, and has the receipt to prove it. Rebates will go out on a first-come, first-served basis, and are limited to one per household.
The rebate only applies to toilets that have the WaterSense label, which means they’ve been independently tested and meet standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It’s not available for toilets installed in new-built homes or add-on bathrooms or used for commercial purposes.
Details on the rebate can be found at stalbert.ca/rebate.
St. Albert-area birders are all aflutter this week about a relatively rare bird spotted just outside the city’s borders.
City resident Bob Lane told the Gazette this week that he had spotted and photographed a meadowlark on R.R. 271 near Villeneuve on June 24 just northwest of St. Albert. The sighting has sparked considerable interest amongst local birders, as meadowlarks are a rare find in this region.
“It’s the kind of bird that’s associated with early summertime on the Prairies,” says Lane.
Sturgeon County birder Jack Dehaas says he spotted the bird about eight kilometres northwest of St. Albert last Saturday.
“It looked like a female,” he says, and was initially perched on a wire along the road before it hopped into the grass.
“It had bugs in its mouth, so you could tell it was feeding young somewhere.”
Dehaas says this is the closest he’s ever seen a meadowlark get to St. Albert.
Lane says that the bird had the distinct yellow breast with the black v-shaped breast-band of the meadowlark. Dehaas suspects that it was a western meadowlark based on the sounds it made.
The western meadowlark is a robin-sized bird known for its warbling, whistling song, reports the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It’s been spotted exactly once in the 23-year history of the St. Albert Christmas Bird count.
Meadowlarks are not at all common in the St. Albert region, says veteran birder Peter Demulder – the closest he’s seen them get to St. Albert is Calahoo, and they’re more typically found near Tofield or Elk Island National Park. He’s also heard that they used to hang around the University of Alberta’s experimental farm in Edmonton.
“They have a beautiful call,” he says of them, one that they typically belt out whilst seated on a post. You’ll usually hear their song before you see the yellow flash of their breast.
Allaboutbirds.org has more on this bird.
